Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “For God’s sake, hold your hands!” shrieked Dromio, his ears singing the anthems of a service he knew only too well. “I’ll take my heels!”

  He fled. Breathing heavily, Antipholus watched him go; and the little children, fearful for the safety of their own ears, vanished away. Antipholus thought of his money. Fear seized his heart. Uneasily he stared about him. “Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind!” he whispered. His servant had been bewitched and had stolen his purse! “I greatly fear my money is not safe!”

  Away he rushed like a madman, to the Centaur Inn. Violently out of breath, he inquired for his purse. It was with the landlord, safe and sound! Vastly relieved, he returned to the market-place, where he found Dromio looking for him as if nothing had happened. “You received no gold? Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner?” Antipholus accused him.

  Dromio scratched his head. “When spake I such a word?”

  The villain’s impudence knew no bounds! Antipholus lost his temper. Once more he began pummelling Dromio’s head.

  “Hold, sir, for God’s sake!” howled Dromio. To his astonishment, his master held. The blows ceased; Antipholus’s furious face had turned gentlemanly.

  Gratefully, Dromio lifted up his head, and saw the cause of his salvation. Like gorgeous vessels, a pair of silken ladies had come sailing down the street, flying the flags of friendship. Antipholus frowned in puzzlement.

  “Ay, ay, Antipholus,” greeted one, the senior in dignity of the pair, approaching with a brisk rustle, “look strange and frown,” and before he could utter a word, she began heaping on his startled head all the reproaches of an injured wife! “Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects. I am not Adriana, nor thy wife. The time was once when thou unurged wouldst vow that never words were music to thine ear, that never objects pleasing in thine eye, that never touch well welcome to thy hand, that never meat sweet-savoured in thy taste, unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee. How comes it now, my husband, O how comes it that thou art then estranged from thyself?”

  “Plead you to me, fair dame?” inquired Antipholus, his head beginning to spin. “I know you not.”

  “Fie, brother, when were you wont to use my sister thus?” Now the other one sailed into the attack. “She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner!”

  “By Dromio?” Suddenly the waves of madness that had begun to engulf him, fell back. Dromio had indeed come to him with a tale of a wife and dinner. It was a plot; and Dromio was in it! How else did the women know their names?

  “I, sir? I never saw her till this time!” cried Dromio, seeing his master’s hands turn to fists. “I never spake with her in all my life!”

  But before Antipholus could answer Dromio in the only language the villain knew, his raised arm was drawn down, and softly linked with Adriana’s. “Come,” murmured she, with all the tenderness of sorrowful wifehood, “I will fasten on this sleeve of thine. Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine . . .”

  She drew him towards a prosperous-looking house, above which hung the sign of the Phoenix. Plainly, it was hers. She was smiling; so was her sister, and so, it seemed, was the bird on the sign.

  As they approached the door, he looked again at Adriana. She was a handsome woman, though lacking a little of her sister’s bloom. “What, was I married to her in my dream?” wondered Antipholus. “Or sleep I now . . . ?” Once more he remembered that he was in Ephesus, that town of soul-killing witches. He shivered, and heard Dromio, moaning in terror behind his back: “This is the fairy land . . . we talk with goblins, owls and sprites . . .”

  “Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner!” commanded the sister.

  “Dromio, keep the gate!” commanded the lady herself. “And let none enter lest I break your pate!” and with a loving smile, she drew the bewildered Antipholus into the house.

  “Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?” he wondered. He shrugged his shoulders and left off resisting. The ladies were fair; it was a strange adventure, to be sure, but the very stuff of a young man’s dream.

  No sooner had the door closed upon the four, than four more appeared in the street: a merchant, tall and stately; a goldsmith, merry and stout; and Antipholus and Dromio! Down to the last whisker, they were the pair who had just entered the house!

  But they were not. Wonderful to relate, they were the very babes who, lashed to the other half of the broken mast, had been borne away by the wild sea, never to be seen again!

  Their history was a strange one. Before the vessel that had saved them could make port, it was boarded by cruel fishermen of Corinth who seized the babes, supposedly hoping for a ransom. The weeping mother, robbed of her dear one and his companion, had only time to tell their names: Antipholus and Dromio—for, like her husband, that was the pair she thought she’d got—and which was the little master and which his little man. Then the mother and babes were parted for ever.

  The wailing little ones were carried off to Corinth, and it was from there that a kindly nobleman, taking pity on them, had brought them to Ephesus, where they had lived and prospered ever since. Antipholus was now the proud possessor of a handsome house and a handsome wife; and Dromio was his man.

  “Good Signior Angelo,” said this new Antipholus to the goldsmith, “you must excuse us all. My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours.” He was late home for dinner and he asked the goldsmith to support him in saying that he had lingered in his shop to watch the making of a necklace he meant to give his wife.

  The goldsmith readily agreed, but the merchant, who did not care for deceit, gravely shook his head. “You’re sad, Signior Balthasar,” said Antipholus, clapping him on the shoulder; and promised him a splendid dinner in his house.

  He went to open the door. It was locked. A little puzzled, he turned to his Dromio: “Go bid them let us in.”

  His Dromio approached the door, bent down and roared through the key-hole to the servants within: “Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!”

  “Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch!” a voice roared back. “Either get thee from the door or sit down at the hatch!”

  He jumped back, amazed. His master, feeling the curious eyes of his companions upon him, strode forward and, banging on the door, demanded to know who it was who dared keep him out of his own house.

  “The porter for this time, sir,” came the reply, “and my name is Dromio!”

  “O villain!” cried Dromio, outraged, “thou hast stolen both mine office and my name!” and he, too, began thumping and kicking at the door like a madman, to get at the invisible thief.

  “Let him knock till it ache!” cried an angry female voice within; upon which Antipholus, beside himself with anger, shouted: “You’ll cry for this, minion, if I beat the door down!” and attacked the door with his fists till the house began to shake.

  At length, from the shuttered window above, came the voice of Adriana, shrill with annoyance: “Who is that at the door that keeps all this noise?”

  Antipholus sighed with relief. “Are you there, wife?” he called. “You might have come before!”

  He waited; but instead of the door being opened, he received a further blow.

  “Your wife, sir knave?” came his wife’s voice, coldly. “Go get you from the door!”

  Antipholus grew red in the face. Even a saint would have been roused to anger at being so shamed before his companions; and Antipholus was a man. Furiously he bade Dromio go fetch him an iron crowbar to break in the door; but the merchant, not wishing to become embroiled in a vulgar domestic brawl, counselled otherwise. Gravely he pointed out that violence in the public street would bring dishonour on the husband no less than on his wife. “Depart in patience,” he advised Antipholus, “and about evening, come yourself alone to know the reason of this strange restraint.”

  Antipholus breathed deeply; then, seeing the wisdom of the merchant’s words, he yielded to the gentleman’s persuasion. But he had promised his companions a dinner, and a dinner t
hey should have. “I know a wench of excellent discourse,” he said, casting a bitter look towards the shuttered window of his mutinous wife, “pretty and witty, wild, and yet, too, gentle. There will we dine.” He turned to the goldsmith. “Get you home and fetch the chain,” he bade him. “Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine, for there’s the house. That chain will I bestow—be it for nothing but to spite my wife—upon mine hostess there.”

  The goldsmith shrugged his shoulders; the merchant looked disapproving; but Antipholus was resolute, even though, as he admitted to himself, “This jest shall cost me some expense.”

  They had gone. A moment later, as if by design, the door of Antipholus’s house opened. Out came the other Antipholus, together with the sister of she with whom he’d dined. Her name was Luciana, and, to Antipholus, she did indeed seem a being made all of light. “And may it be,” she was gently accusing, “that you have quite forgot a husband’s office? If you did wed my sister for her wealth, then for her wealth’s sake, use her with more kindness.”

  Her reproaches were justified: while he had been consuming Adriana’s dinner with his jaws, he had been consuming Luciana’s beauty with his eyes. And Adriana had wept.

  “Or if you like elsewhere,” Luciana advised him, with a sad, wise smile, “do it by stealth. Let not my sister read it in your eye. Be secret-false; what need she be acquainted? Alas, poor women,” she sighed, “make us but believe, being compact of credit, that you love us; though others have the arm, show us the sleeve.”

  “Sweet mistress,” protested Antipholus, desperate to be believed, ‘your weeping sister is no wife of mine, nor to her bed no homage do I owe! Far more, far more to you do I decline!” and, suiting his action to his words, he knelt before the lovely Luciana, who had gone a fair way to enslaving his heart. “O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note to drown me in thy sister’s flood of tears!” he pleaded. “Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote. Spread o’er the silver waves thy golden hairs and as a bed I’ll take thee, and there lie—”

  “What, are you mad?” cried Luciana, skipping back with a little scream.

  “Sweet love—”

  “Why call you me ‘love’?” wailed Luciana. “Call my sister so–”

  “It is thyself, mine own self’s better part, mine eye’s clear eye, my dear heart’s dearer heart—”

  “—All this my sister is, or else should be!” begged Luciana; but Antipholus was not to be silenced. “Thee will I love,” he cried. “Give me thy hand!”

  “O soft, sir, hold you still!” she pleaded, avoiding his eager grasp. “I’ll fetch my sister to get her good will!” With that, she fled, fearing as much for her reason as for her virtue. Antipholus was mad—

  The door had no sooner shut upon her than out rushed Dromio. His eyes were wild, his cheeks were pale, and he trembled in every limb. He had a fearful tale to tell.

  His situation had turned out to be the same as his master’s. A strange woman had claimed him as her husband! A fearsome woman, and monstrous fat! “She’s the kitchen wench,” moaned Dromio, “and all grease, and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light! If she lives till doomsday she’ll burn a week longer than the whole world!” But the worst thing of all was that, not only did she know Dromio’s name, she knew everything about him, even to his very birthmarks! It was witchcraft!

  Antipholus gazed at the house. It was indeed a house of witches. He himself had been ensnared, to be lured, maybe, to his destruction. He shivered. The wisest course was to be gone. He bade Dromio go at once to the harbour and secure passage on any vessel leaving Ephesus that night, and then to meet him in the market-place.

  Joyfully, Dromio hastened away; but Antipholus lingered. Time and again he looked back at the house of his strange adventure. He smiled, he frowned, he shook his head. He had made up his mind. “I’ll stop mine ears against the mermaid’s song,” he decided firmly; but it was more in hope than conviction.

  “Master Antipholus!”

  A gentleman, short, stout and merry, was hastening after him. He stopped.

  “Ay, that’s my name.”

  “I know it well, sir,” confessed the gentleman. Then, smiling a goldsmith’s smile, which displayed a gorgeous tooth or two winking among the white, he drew a glittering chain from his purse and offered it to Antipholus. He would have brought it to the Porpentine, he said, only it had not been finished in time.

  Once more, Antipholus’s head began to spin. “What is your will that I shall do with this?”

  “Go home with it, and please your wife withal,” the goldsmith advised, “and soon at supper-time I’ll visit you, and then receive my money for the chain.”

  “I pray you, sir, receive the money now,” protested Antipholus, “for fear you ne’er see chain nor money more—”

  “You are a merry man, sir!” laughed the goldsmith. “Fare you well!” and deftly hanging the chain about Antipholus’s neck, trotted away, smiling his Midas smile.

  Antipholus stared after the goldsmith, then down at the chain. Plainly, it was valuable. Like all fairy tales, his adventure had led him to gold. Only a fool would refuse it. At a rapid pace, he set off for the market-place, where Dromio would be waiting for him with news of a ship . . .

  In another part of the town, the door of the Porpentine Inn opened, and out came Antipholus and Dromio. The other ones. Antipholus had not recovered his temper: the dinner with the fair hostess had not gone well. He’d thought better of giving the costly gold chain to the wench for nothing, merely to spite his wife. So to spare himself some of the expense, he’d offered to exchange it for a ring she’d been wearing, that had taken his eye. Readily, she’d agreed; but the goldsmith and the promised chain had failed to arrive. Consequently, his anger against the cause of all his present troubles burned fiercely in his breast.

  “Go thou and buy a rope’s end,” he commanded Dromio; “that will I bestow among my wife and her confederates for locking me out of my doors by day!” He would have used his fists, but they were still bruised from banging on the door.

  Away rushed Dromio, and Antipholus set off for the market-place to call at the goldsmith’s shop. But he was spared the journey. The goldsmith was in the street, and coming towards him. He was accompanied by a merchant and an officer of the law. Antipholus ignored them and, addressing himself to the goldsmith, bitterly reproached him for his failure to bring the chain.

  The goldsmith looked briefly surprised; then, smiling his irritating smile, he presented Antipholus with the bill for the chain. He needed the money, he said. He owed it to the merchant, who had brought the officer to make sure it was paid.

  “I am not furnished with the present money,” said Antipholus, and told the goldsmith to take the chain to his house, where his wife would pay for it.

  The goldsmith shrugged his shoulders. “Well, sir, I will. Have you the chain about you?” He held out his hand.

  Antipholus stared at it; blankly. He waved it away, as a man might dismiss a troublesome fly.

  The hand returned. “Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain.”

  Antipholus, already sorely beset by the misfortunes that had befallen him that day, was in no mood to bandy words with the goldsmith, who was plainly trying to excuse himself for not having come to the Porpentine. As patiently as he could, he explained that he did not have the chain. He had never had the chain. It was the goldsmith who had the chain; and once more he thrust the hand aside.

  The goldsmith’s habitual good humour began to desert him. The merchant by his side was growing impatient; the officer was shuffling his feet. A crowd had begun to gather; reputations were at stake. As Antipholus was plainly not going to give up the chain, the goldsmith loudly demanded his money.

  “I owe you none till I receive the chain!” shouted Antipholus, losing his temper entirely.

  “You know I gave it you half an hour since!” shouted the goldsmith, losing his.

  Furiously,
Antipholus denied it, and clenched his fists. The goldsmith had had enough. Never in his life before had he met with so bare-faced an attempt to cheat him! “Arrest him!” he demanded of the officer, and pointed a trembling finger at Antipholus. “I would not spare my brother in this case if he should scorn me so apparently!”

  Even as the officer clapped his hand upon Antipholus’s shoulder, his servant, Dromio, appeared. Eagerly, he told his master that he had secured passage on a vessel bound for Epidamnum, and sailing with the tide. Doubtless, thought the goldsmith grimly, with the chain. “Sir, sir,” he said to the speechless Antipholus, “I shall have law in Ephesus to your notorious shame!”

  Antipholus glared at Dromio. “What ship of Epidamnum?” he demanded.

  “A ship you sent me to,” returned the villain, with his stupid grin.

  “Thou drunken slave!” roared Antipholus. “I sent thee for a rope!”

  With difficulty, he mastered himself, and took stock of his position. Somehow or other, the world had gone mad and he, Antipholus of Ephesus, beloved husband and respected citizen, had been arrested for debt! He needed money, urgently. He took a key from his pocket. “To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight,” he commanded Dromio. “Give her this key, and tell her in the desk that’s covered o’er with Turkish tapestry there is a purse of ducats. Let her send it.” Then, as Dromio showed signs of bewilderment, he shouted, “Hie thee, slave! Be gone!” and raised his fists.

  Away rushed Dromio like the wind. Though he dreaded returning to the house of witches, and, in particular, to the fat witch in the kitchen, his master stood in need of help, and he was his master’s man.

  When he reached the house, Adriana and Luciana were grieving over the strangeness that had come over Antipholus. Like a true sister, Luciana had told Adriana of Antipholus’s mad love for her; and Adriana, while abusing her faithless husband, had grieved afresh. It was in the midst of these tearful complainings that Dromio arrived.